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Joey Kadmiri put his head in his hands, covering the shiner a group of male Australian strippers left on his face days before.

He doesn’t belong in a jail cell for his backstage run-in with the dancers from the Thunder From Down Under, he said. What he needs, he said during a jailhouse interview today, is outpatient therapy for his mental illness.

Kadmiri, 24, blamed one of his “mental trip-out” episodes for Tuesday’s melee at the Excalibur that landed him at the Clark County Detention Center on charges of attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon; burglary while in possession of a firearm; six counts of robbery with use of a deadly weapon; carrying a concealed firearm or other deadly weapon; and discharge of a firearm within a structure.

Kadmiri said today that he was afraid for his life and high on meth that night. He said he self-medicates his mental illness, which has never been diagnosed.

“I have these hallucinations that I’m running away from somebody, and I ended up backstage somehow,” Kadmiri said. Terrified that someone wanted him dead, Kadmiri decided to use the show’s costumes as a disguise, he said.

“I didn’t try to hurt anyone. I know myself,” Kadmiri said. “I was just trying to protect myself and be safe.”

Kadmiri is accused of sneaking backstage, where the dancers confronted him when they noticed him trying to steal some of the show’s props and costumes, according to a Metro Police arrest report.

During an ensuing fight, Kadmiri allegedly put a gun to a performer’s head, but one of the men pushed it away and a shot went into a wall, police said.

“I turned around and it fired somehow,” said Kadmiri, who maintains the gun was not his and that he was just playing with some props, not stealing them. “Thank God it didn’t hit anybody; thank God.”

Kadmiri said he is convinced all police are out to get him and when his hallucinations intensify, he starts to believe everyone is a cop.

“I don’t know what they are going to do to me. I honestly don’t think I did anything wrong except put on the T-shirts,” Kadmiri said. “Prisons and jails are the only place they want to send me.”

Kadmiri was a wanted man when he was arrested on Tuesday.

A judge issued a warrant for his arrest in December in a case in which he is accused of striking a woman, pointing a gun at her and confining her to a closet in November. In that case, Kadmiri is charged with assault with a deadly weapon, first-degree kidnapping and battery constituting domestic violence and coercion.

Court records show Kadmiri has faced charges including jaywalking, providing false information to police and resisting an officer. He was convicted in September 2011 of misdemeanor escape stemming from a March 2010 attempt to run, while handcuffed, from police arresting him on unspecified felony counts, records show.